In an existing WiFi (Wireless Fidelity, Wireless Fidelity) technology, for an application scenario where a large number of WiFi STAs (station, station) simultaneously enter a WiFi AP (access point, access point) coverage area, before a corresponding STA and an AP establish a connection, the STA first needs to determine which WiFi APs corresponding to a WiFi network exist in the surrounding and select a WiFi AP meeting a requirement of the STA from these WiFi APs, and then executes a process of connecting to a WiFi network to which the corresponding WiFi AP belongs.
According to existing specifications, a WiFi STA may discover an AP by receiving a beacon (Beacon) message that is periodically sent by the AP by broadcasting, and may also discover a network by sending an active scan message. If an WiFi STA needs to discover a WiFi AP existing in the surrounding as soon as possible, the WiFi STA may broadcast a network probe request message (Probe request) and add, in the network probe request message, an information identifier corresponding to related information of one or more requested WiFi networks, that is, WiFi APs; and one or more APs receiving the Probe request in an adjacent area of the WiFi STA reply to the STA with a probe response message (Probe response) and include related information of the WiFi AP requested by the STA in the probe response message.
In the prior art, when broadcasting a Probe request, each STA needs to scan a plurality of channels supported by the STA one by one, send the Probe request through each channel, and wait to receive a Probe response generated by one or more APs in an adjacent area for a response. It can be seen that each Probe request causes that a plurality of APs in the adjacent area give a response and therefore generate a plurality of Probe responses. Therefore, for a scenario where a large number of STAs perform network discovery almost at the same time, at a network discovery stage, each channel of the STA is used for transmitting network discovery messages, that is, the Probe request and the Probe responses, most of the time.
It can be seen that for an application scenario where a large number of STAs wait to access a network, an existing WiFi network discovery mechanism causes that a large number of Probe request/response messages occupy a communication channel used by an STA and an AP, which largely reduces channel use efficiency.